Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is on the defensive, its struggles reverberating throughout Islamist movements that the secretive organization has spawned world-wide. Just recently, the Brothers' political rise seemed unstoppable. Candidates linked with the group won most races they contested in Egypt's 2005 parliamentary elections, gaining a record 20% of seats. Across the border in Gaza, another election the following year propelled the Brotherhood's Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, into power.Since then, Egypt's government jailed key Brotherhood members, crimped its financing and changed the constitution to clip religious parties' wings. The Brotherhood made missteps, too, alienating many Egyptians with saber rattling and proposed restrictions on women and Christians. These setbacks have undermined the group's ability to impose its Islamic agenda on this country of 81 million people, the Arab world's largest. "When we're not advancing, we are retreating. And right now we are not spreading, we are not achieving our goals," the Brotherhood's second-in-command, Mohamed Habib, said in an interview.
Across the Muslim world, authoritarian governments, Islamist revivalists and liberals often fight for influence. Egypt is a crucial battleground. A decline of the Brotherhood here, with its shrill anti-Israeli rhetoric and intricate ties to Hamas, strengthens President Hosni Mubarak's policy of engagement with the Jewish state. It could also give him more room to work with President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit Egypt next month, on reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Brotherhood leaders caution against reading too much into the current troubles, saying the 81-year-old group has bounced back from past challenges. Others say the government's suppression of the Brotherhood, Egypt's main nonviolent opposition movement -- paired with arrests of Mr. Mubarak's secular foes -- can unleash more radical forces. "If it continues this way, it's very dangerous and could lead to the return of extremism and terrorism in Egypt," says Ayman Nour, a liberal politician who ran for president against Mr. Mubarak in 2005 and was later imprisoned on campaign-fraud charges that the U.S. government condemned as politically motivated.
Though it is outlawed by the Egyptian state, the Brotherhood operates here more or less in the open. It maintains hundreds of offices and fields electoral candidates. In part thanks to American pressure to liberalize Egypt's authoritarian political system, these candidates -- running as independents -- were allowed to contest 145 seats, almost one-third of the total, in parliamentary elections in November and December 2005. By winning 88 races, the Brotherhood cemented its role as Egypt's dominant opposition force. The next-biggest opposition faction, the liberal Wafd party, garnered just seven seats.
The poll results, and the subsequent Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip, provoked a government counterattack. In 2007, Egypt amended its constitution, skewing future representation in favor of registered parties and against independents, the only candidates the outlawed Brotherhood can field. When local council elections, initially due for 2006, were finally held last year, the state disqualified most Brotherhood candidates. The group boycotted. Mr. Habib, the Brotherhood's white-haired deputy chief, says its candidates are unlikely to win more than five to 10 seats in parliamentary elections slated for next year.
The regime launched a wave of arrests and military trials against the group, as well, the harshest such security clampdown on the Brotherhood in decades. This dragnet ensnared thousands of rank-and-file members. It also netted some Brotherhood leaders who ran the financial apparatus that funnels millions of dollars in donations and investment proceeds into campaigning and social outreach. The group's third-in-command, businessman Khairat al Shater, was arrested in December 2006 and sentenced last year to seven years in prison for financing a banned group. Government officials are unapologetic about the crackdown, which disrupted the Brothers' social services. "We're dealing with a clandestine organization," says Ali Eddin Helal, information secretary of the ruling National Democratic Party.
The regime pressed its public-relations campaign against the Brotherhood last month, when it said it had cracked a cell of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia that was spying in Egypt and smuggling weapons to Hamas. State media painted the Brotherhood as an unpatriotic hireling of Iran, which sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Brotherhood has put up little resistance, and its only attempt at showing its muscle backfired. A 2006 militia-style march by masked Brotherhood students at Cairo's Al Azhar University provoked public outcry, reminding many Egyptians of the group's violent past. More arrests followed. "Their [nonviolent] strategy doesn't allow them to react -- it doesn't allow an escalation," says Issandr el Amrani, a Cairo-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.
Brotherhood leaders say its base remains dedicated. "If they say we are weakened, why are they still afraid of us?" asks Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, one of two dozen members in the Brotherhood's topmost body, the Guidance Council. "Let's have a free election, and we shall see who wins!"
Much more at link. A very well reported piece, IMHO.